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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Preview of this season's schedule

Let's take a second to look at this season's schedule. A little preparation will go a long way towards a potential playoff appearance.

First, some logistics. Note that most games are at fields that are somewhat unfamiliar. Make sure to check schedules and directions carefully. We start off on a new turf field in Silver Spring - Blair High School. De, one of only two Maryland residents on the team, must have gotten to the Exec Board. Our new "home field" will be Ridge in Southeast, where we play fully half our regular season schedule. We will play our first matches at Wilson High School and Dunbar High School, both in Northwest DC, and only one game at our favorite field, Trinity. Unlike past years, where we often played in Virginia, we now play almost exclusively in the District. Seven of our games will be played there, with this coming week as the only exception.

The times and dates of our games are decent. There is only one early morning game - on April 25th - and 9:00 a.m. isn't that bad. We have a nice 3:00 p.m. kickoff this week to avoid a potential conflict with the Cherry Blossom tournament. More importantly, check out the flow of our schedule. We start off with an initial game this weekend, then we have two weekends off. Let's make sure to schedule practices to take advantage of that. When we resume play April 18th, we'll have six consecutive games, which is more than I can remember us playing before. Most likely, this will work to our advantage, if we can stay healthy. It gives us a great opportunity to get into a rhythm and pick up some wins. We'll have a break in the last few weeks to rest up before the final game and hopefully the playoffs (but so will everyone else).

Now, our opponents. The schedule seems - at least at this point - to be pretty balanced but of course it will be difficult. We do have some darn tough teams. I never particularly relish playing the promoted and relegated teams; however, we play them all. DC Divided and Taz Devils are both on the schedule, formerly of the First Division, and so are Tsunami and DC Thunder, formerly of the Third Division. You can bet the Third Division teams will be hungry and in-form. I know Sanjay's DC Divided team hasn't lost a step; they just had some miscues last season after nearly making it to Premier before that. Taz Devils beat us good many moons ago. It's time to right that wrong.

Beyond those teams, we also play several teams that know us and have beaten us. Itchy & Scratchy managed a win last year, 5-3, and Lost Tourists, Little Urban Achievers (LUC), and Celtic have both stolen games from us. We let Celtic walk away with the win in week two last season. I've always wanted to beat LUC, but we never have. They beat us soundly last season, but the win wasn't rewarding for them because we managed to frustrate them enough for them to draw a red card, and also we were able to give them a much more difficult playoff schedule, which they ultimately couldn't handle. They'll be ready to beat us again.

It's going to be a great season and I think we can do great!


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